PPL licensing of dentist waiting rooms

A recent decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) ruled that dentist's waiting rooms in Italy did not have to be licensed by the local music collecting society for playing recorded music. However, Italian copyright law is different to the situation in the UK and this ruling does not affect PPL or their licensees. If you have a PPL licence for playing recorded music in a waiting room, you will still require the licence.

The main difference is that in Italy the copyright owners only have a right to 'equitable remuneration' (the right to be paid when their recording is played in public); whereas in the UK they have the 'exclusive right' for the recording to be played in public, meaning that in the UK copyright owners have the right to prevent recordings being played, not just to be paid when they are. The ECJ decided that playing recorded music in a waiting room could not be counted as 'communication to the public' in the context of a remuneration right and therefore the copyright owners had no right to be paid for this use of their music. The ECJ specifically stated that they were not considering an 'exclusive right' in this case so it has no affect on UK law.